When Alone

When I close my door and the room opens up, exactly like I left it: the living room bare and uninviting the kitchen, appliances and all... oh yes! I forgot to dump the coffee grinds, they are still waiting for me, patiently, to slide them on into the orange polyethylene, one more stop on the way to the graveyard, and then they will return to their vital elements, yes! I am the mediator, negotiating their passage.

I have filled up lines about nothing, moods, and feelings, expanding on little nuances, observations, here and there and more, since, well I am alone for weeks on end, and that's what we, I, do, when alone, when there is no intermediary or animate.

Deep sighs, abound. Yes.

So observations, I make a lot of them. I remember... - oh this calls for a new paragraph!

Yes. I was walking along with my dad, I recall, we were walking over a pedestrian bridge, in Tehran, on our way to the International Book Fair! I was in the market, so to speak, for some books, but at the time I wasn't very knowledgeable, and had only few names of authors floating in the ether of my cranium. Yes, but I was desperate to strike out a gem at the fair!

Well it was the summer of course - that is when fairs happen - and we were walking over said bridge, there were people walking past us, some slower than others. In any case, my dad nods over to a person - I don't remember exactly, but he must have been wearing an odd article of clothing, some colour that caught his eyes - he says,

look at that man, there,
now, if you want to be an author at some point in your life, you must take note of people,
their clothing, perhaps
their gait, their physical stature, something that strikes you,
these are the characters of your story,
make observations.

A valuable lesson. One that I remind myself of, daily. Sometimes, of course, as has been the case lately, I observe too keenly, trying to make up a story in my head, for every little sign, every old man at the bus stop, the way the bus kneels, the shades of snow, the way the last rays of sun glance on yellow bricks, lodged firmly in low-income housing. Yes. Nevertheless, I live by this rule, make observations to colour your life in.